Avoidance

So maybe I've been avoiding blogging because I haven't gotten it right, yet. My rewrite on my first chapter. I got 5 pages written and keep wondering if that's where the scene is supposed to begin. Ugh! So I've resigned myself to making my husband's corrections to the latter part of the story until the first chapter comes back to me. Oh, I had it, but lost it somehow. Maybe it was the idea of rewriting—once again—that has my brain building up a wall of defense. So frustrating.

Well, I did go to the WRW workshop this past weekend on Voice. Kathleen Gilles Seidel gave the class and did an excellent job. She stressed writing about what fascinates us and we feel passionate about. We did a bunch of exercises based on questions like "what do you want to know more about" and "what places do you love and what matters most about them." Whenever someone answered, she tried to get the person to dig deeper. When we talked about things that had annoyed us this week, she asked that we reflect on why it made us angry. If someone cut us off in traffic, it's not just that they cut us off. There's a whole slew of issues like disrepect, taking our lives for granted, frightening us, etc., that are behind why we were upset by that action. They were great exercises and really helped people focus.

I ate lunch with some fellow writers and it felt good to talk shop with people who understand what I'm going through. I hope to see some of them again at the retreat. WRW is a wonderful group of writers!